Observations and provocations from The Times' Opinion staff

Digital anorexia

October 16, 2009 | 1:09
pm

Ralph Lauren has apologized, but that doesn't mean blogs or feminist groups are about to let go of the grotesque retouch job on a fashion shot that makes the model's waist look like it was squeezed into an illegal torture device. Her hips appear narrower than her head, as blog Boing Boing pointed out, and her thighs look like they came straight from a classroom skeleton. The clothing company eventually confessed to the mistake, saying it was having a bad Photoshop day.

But now the National Organization for Women is demanding a further apology, to women everywhere for the company's alleged obsession with portraying extreme thinness, and preferably also to Filippa Hamilton, the model in the ad who was fired by Ralph Lauren after years of being one of its top models. Hamilton said the clothier found her 120-pound girth on a 5-foot-10 body -- translating to a size 4 -- too bulky to fit into its sample sizes. The company denies that's why she was fired.

Meanwhile, the blogs are gleefully showing off another photo, reportedly also Ralph Lauren, showing a pretty model with a bizarrely thin, elongated, hipless body, like the aliens in "Cocoon." Never fear, E.T. Your short legs and dumpy midsection will never qualify you as a Ralph Lauren model -- that is, not without emergency Photoshopping -- but NOW is holding its fourth annual "Love Your Body" celebration next Wednesday.

Photo: On the left, Filippa Hamilton with digital liposuction; on the right, as she is. Credit: AP